# Social Groups



## spaekle (May 10, 2009)

So, a while back there was a thread where it was mentioned that Social Groups are not moderated at all. This shows. Very, very much. There are at least five groups about spriting, several that serve as RP lounges (isn't there a forum for those?), quite a few that seem to be nothing more than "this particular group of people comes here to spam without consequence", and still more that don't seem to have a point at all and would probably be locked if they were threads in the Clubs forum. 

Now, admittedly I don't have many very good suggestions as to what to do myself. This probably revives the clubs forum vs. social groups thing and the redundancy of having both; I _do_ think that having both is, well, redundant. If there's no one willing to take control of social groups/ no one really even cares about them, _I_ wouldn't particularly care if they were just disabled - the activity there seems minimal compared to the Clubs forum anyway. I do think that the Social Groups feature is a neat one that could be very useful if utilized properly, but we _did_ already have the Clubs forum before Social Groups came along, and said forum _is_ what more people seem to prefer.

So, yeah. I'm wanting other people's opinions on this. This wasn't really intended to be obnoxious and whiny, but if it comes across as being that way I'm sorry. :[ Nothing's really up to me anyway.


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## Abwayax (May 10, 2009)

Both _seem_ to serve the same purpose; however, with the Clubs forum, you can't really control who posts in your thread; the Social Cliques feature, however, lets you control very precisely who posts in or even _views_ discussions in your group. Thus, those scheming elitists/atheists/communists/Arylettopians can keep prying eyes away from their spam important discussions.


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## spaekle (May 10, 2009)

This is true. They serve the same basic purpose of giving people who share a particular interest a place to have discussion about said interest, only one has more sparkly features and privacy options. 

I don't think private groups is really a bad thing in itself, but I can see it being slightly abused in some situations ("let's make a private group so we can post stupid random crap and no one can see"). But again, that probably wouldn't be an issue if Social Groups were being moderated by someone.


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## surskitty (May 10, 2009)

Number 100 said:


> Both _seem_ to serve the same purpose; however, with the Clubs forum, you can't really control who posts in your thread


You can ask for threadmin, though!  Then you sort of get control.


I am totally in favour of ditching one of the two.  I don't have any personal investment in either, though I'm also in favour of getting rid of all redundant Clubs threads (merge 'm with discussion threads, shove in either forum).

There's no real point having both a Club and a Social Group.


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## Abwayax (May 10, 2009)

Ehh, if I were the one in charge, I'd say ditch the clubs. The Social Clique feature kinda works better for that sort of thing.


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## Blastoise Fortooate (May 10, 2009)

> Ehh, if I were the one in charge, I'd say ditch the clubs. The Social Clique feature kinda works better for that sort of thing.


Second'd


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## spaekle (May 10, 2009)

I'm leaning more toward ditching clubs too.

Edit: Think a poll would be kind of groovy in this situation, if a mod could? :V


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## surskitty (May 10, 2009)

Clubs are easier to moderate, I think.


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## Tailsy (May 10, 2009)

Mods can see social groups anyway, so they're not exactly private.


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## surskitty (May 10, 2009)

Wait, there are private social groups...?


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## spaekle (May 10, 2009)

You can modify the settings on social groups so that only members (and mods, apparently) can see what's posted there, make them invite-only, things like that.


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## Vladimir Putin's LJ (May 10, 2009)

I find the LGBT club to be quite interesting, and the cartoon club is fun. I know you're in the former as well, Spaekle, but if everyone wants to delete clubs I won't speak against it.


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## Blastoise Fortooate (May 10, 2009)

Yeah, but with social groups, it's possible to set up a discussion that would, if seen by most people, challenge the integrity of a system.

For example, there's an ASBer discussion group only seeable by updaters to the game and mods (apparently). This social group contains game-sensitive information that, if released to the players of ASBer, would (at least partially) destroy the integrity of said game.

If there weren't any social groups, I'd be hard pressed to figure out how to handle something like that.

EDIT: Maybe merge the Clubs into the Misc. Section as a Subforum?


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## spaekle (May 10, 2009)

Yeah, I know that in both situations there is stuff worth keeping and something cool is probably going to end up lost either way if one is ditched. We could make an LGBT social group just the same if that's the one that ends up being kept, but that doesn't change that that entire thread will be lost. :[


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## Kratos Aurion (May 10, 2009)

You could just lock the entire clubs forum but leave it there for archival purposes.


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## surskitty (May 10, 2009)

And move a few club threads.


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## spaekle (May 10, 2009)

Kratos Aurion said:


> You could just lock the entire clubs forum but leave it there for archival purposes.


I thought of that, but then I thought it'd be too messy-looking to keep something that's not in use any more on the main page. I guess it's a cool idea.


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## ultraviolet (May 11, 2009)

I'd like the social groups feature more if there was more control over them. afaik you can't delete discussions or mod people.


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## Butterfree (May 11, 2009)

I'd honestly rather ditch social groups than clubs, mostly for one reason: the social groups are not organized at all. You can't just stumble upon an interesting social group; you won't find one unless you're specifically looking for one to join. With clubs, meanwhile, you can enter the forum to check another club you're in and just happen to eye a club about a subject you also find interesting. It also makes checking your clubs a more natural part of forum browsing. If all clubs were moved to social groups, I'd fall out of them completely and never get back. :/


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## spaekle (May 11, 2009)

Yeah, parts of how the social groups are organized still kind of bother me, especially how out-of-the way they are in relation to everything else. Although there is a group list that functions much like an ordinary forum listing (but you're far less likely to look at), plus a list of new groups on the main page and a random group at the top. Just sayin'. :V


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## surskitty (May 11, 2009)

It's still nowhere near as clean.


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## spaekle (Aug 5, 2009)

I know I'm bumping this, but we were having a pretty good discussion and nothing ever got resolved. :( If no one else cares I'll shut up. I actually got reminded of this thread when I was at another message board and saw they had just put rules into place because their social groups were getting out of control.

In all, I think that social groups has a lot more cool _features_ than a simple thread would; if the presentation weren't so cluttered and it didn't feel so detached it's be perfect. Unfortunately, I don't know if there's any way to fix those things, if anyone cares enough to _want_ to fix those things, or even if enough people really like social groups enough to want to use them.

(It'd be cool if we got some opinions from people who use the social groups feature...)


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